Oda may make us wait, but he rarely fails to deliver when the time comes. And this week, he has delivered. My god, has he delivered. It’s a hype chapter, but it’s also a ‘more questions’ rather than a ‘some answers’ kind of installment.

Imu rising out of Saturn is something that has the potential to look goofy, but he pulls it off to surprisingly intimidating effect. Man, I have so many questions about how his powers work – why didn’t this happen at Egghead? Why does this also make Saturn so much bigger? Is Saturn even conscious while this happens – he was pretty chatty on Egghead but doesn’t speak a word while acting as a portal here. Look at the way the swirls on his legs come alive to attack; the other Elders don’t have swirls in their monster forms, so is there an equivalent for them? Roger’s wounded crewman doesn’t seem to have been hit with the same corrosive poison Saturn coated his talons with on Egghead, so does an Imu possession limit some of their powers as well as adding all this weird new stuff? Does the wound being ‘fascinating’ hint to something around Domi Reversi? So many questions I can’t wait to see answered.

Fascinated by Garp this week. These are not the words and actions of someone planning to keep his Marine career going. Full disillusionment and a Luffy-level willingness to take a swing at the world’s highest power. So what happens next? The fact that he’s even allowed to live and that he’d stick with this side after everything makes me feel there has to be some kind of memory manipulation involved in making him into the Marines’ ‘hero.’ I think Oda would have to work to make a long-con ‘bring them down from the inside’ play work for a guy like Garp, even if Sengoku pressures him into it. And to be committed enough to that kind of plan to let Ace die? I don’t think Garp would do that unless he really believed he was in the right, and that would mean not having this incident in his mind at that moment. I’ll be very curious to see how this gets played, and how it could connect to a present day story with Garp captive at Fullalead.

Rocks and Imu’s exchange about a promise is for sure one to stick a pin in, probably for when we get more from the Harley mural. Seems the Davy clan set themselves a purpose that’s at odds with Imu’s, but what, and when? Questions, questions.

I enjoy seeing known Devil Fruits in the hands of unexpected users in these flashbacks. And I like how John getting blown away in the middle of his Big Eater move naturally scatters treasure across a wide area of the island. When the time comes for a frantic retreat, it’s going to make it easy to justify random pirates grabbing what they can see without looking too close, helping Shanks end up where he ends up. Also as a way to separate Dragon and Shanks without Dragon having to abandon the child.

The main event is a truly killer spread. It feels like an event, and not just because we’ve been told all of these guys is a big deal, but because each one has hundreds of pages of setup making them into characters that matter to us. I can appreciate a brief, efficient story when I see one, but this kind of epic-feeling scope is the domain of the long-form narrative. It just hits different. And holy shit does it look cool.

This attack even gets a bit of unique rendering unlike much else in the series. Look at the grey around the explosion in the main spread and covering the middle panel of the following page. It’s not the even halftone pattern Oda usually goes to for shading, it’s a smudgy and uneven shade with something of a canvas texture to it. It feels similar to the shading used to give the Sleeptid monsters the feeling they were drawn and coloured by children, but not quite the same. The canvas texture even impacts the black inking that runs through it, strangely enough. I wonder if it’s just a new tool Oda recently added to his kit after first starting to change up his shading with the Sleeptids and the Harley mural.

And, of course, more questions for the final pages. How does Domi Reversi work? Who can resist it and how do they do so? I’m pretty surprised to see Rocks get taken. If it was just willpower or some innate ability of a big-name clan that provided resistance, you’d think he’d be in the clear. I also thought because we’re likely to get Harald’s Reversi in the near future, Oda wouldn’t want to stack up the same twist too many times. And even if Rocks does go rogue and chase his family, would that really be enough to make the others here give up on Imu. A chapter or two ago I was saying we’re mostly just watching foregone events play out, but Oda’s managed to throw in enough unknowns to really get me wondering about the coming weeks.